1980s

No Mojo Nixon videos. Actually, I was looking for Mazzy Star videos, of which they had none. YouTube to the rescue.

Meanwhile, enjoy this:

Oh, and here’s Mazzy Star. What a great song:

Status Quo, 1968:

Forgotten Rebels, 1983:

Camper Van Beethoven, 1989:

Ozzy Osbourne/Type O Negative, 1997:

The BBC forum headline “Can Devolution work in Northern Ireland?” caught my eye. My response?

Devolution works everywhere. ;)

Wikipedia:

• Devolution
• Devo

From Matthew Perpetua, writer of the spiffy FLUXBLOG, comes a new project with a cool concept — Pop Songs 07 — writing “a post about every song on every R.E.M. album, plus most of their major non-album tracks.”

It’s not all about R.E.M. love, either, with what look to be critical, as well as realistic and appreciative looks at songs by one of my own personal favorite bands.

There’s even room for some lyricism of Perpetua’s own. Check out this evocative opening paragraph from the post on “Disturbance At The Heron House”:

Back when I was in high school I had a very vivid dream in which I saw Michael Stipe sing “Disturbance At The Heron House” with Nirvana on MTV Unplugged. Clearly I was just conflating their respective performances for the program, but thirteen years later I still can vaguely recall a beatific Kurt Cobain playing guitar and humming along with Michael Stipe every time I hear the song. It’s too bad that it didn’t happen; you just know it would’ve been wonderful.

Sure would.

Sad news from Placentia — Brent Liles, former Social Distortion and Agent Orange bassist, was killed on January 18th after he was run over on his bicycle by a big rig truck. He was 43.

Liles joined Social Distortion in 1981 and played bass on the band’s groundbreaking “Mommy’s Little Monster” recording two years later. The album brought the group widespread acclaim and helped establish Social Distortion as one of the top punk rock acts in the nation.

But Liles and drummer Derek O’Brien quit the band during a New Year’s Eve performance in 1983 because they were fed up with the group’s internal turmoil.

Liles went on to play with other punk groups such as Agent Orange.